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Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“: Hence, those with attainment can compose books and put their attainments to writing in intimations and allegories. They will be understood by all who have been rewarded with the degrees that the books describe, and they will have common attainment with them. But those who have not been rewarded with the full measure of the degree as the authors will not be able to understand their intimations. It is even more so with those who have not been rewarded with any attainment; they will not understand a thing about them, as they have no common attainments.

If a person attains something, then according to his understanding he can imagine and clarify, at least a little, what Kabbalists on other levels feel. But of course, a person who has not been through the levels that the books speak about cannot understand what they are like. Of course, if a person is only in this world and has not acquired any spiritual attainment on any level, he will certainly not be able to imagine correctly anything that is said in Kabbalah books.

Question: Can we say that two people who are in the same spiritual world attain the same level of annulment?

Answer: But each one does only in his own way and according to his specific measure.

Question: So in what way is their annulment equal and in what way are they different?

Answer: Suppose I started studying in a university together with my clever talented friend; he is clever and I am not so clever, and so we are each required to make different efforts. He, along with his study, manages to have fun and to look for work; everything is easy for him, while poor me, I have to sweat over my books from morning to night and don’t see the light of day. Eventually we both graduate: He has a diploma and I have a diploma. This is what usually happens in our world.

But in spirituality it’s different; the whole point is the efforts a person makes. I feel the level that I acquire to the full depth of NRNHY, while he attains the minimal level of Nefesh. Therefore it says, “The reward is according to one’s sorrow.” The sorrow in this case is a person’s exertion. This is the way the opposite value between Lights and vessels is arranged.

Question: So what does it mean to be in the same world with someone?

Answer: We are on the same level, but the depth, the recognition, the understanding, the reasons, and the outcomes are different for each of us. On every level there are the Lights of NRNHY, the SefirotKHB-ZON, the levels of the still nature, the vegetative, the animate and the speaking. A cat lives in our world just like us, but what does it understand compared to us? It’s the same in spirituality: What will a desire on the level of a “cat” understand and feel?

Question: If two people worry about one another and each one does his best, how can their effort be compatible?

Answer: Each one’s specific personal force doesn’t change, just like stem cells. It is rather the efforts and the exertion that change: to what extent each one has made efforts and is incorporated in everyone. If I am incorporated in everyone at my root point, at the end of correction I attain what you attain and we are totally adhered. But each of us can reach this adhesion from this root point.

Thus we differ in the initial “root” point in which there is no thickness (no “thickness” of the desire), but only the difference, the root, the posterior of Nefesh of Kedusha. We take everything else from the whole general vessel, eventually, we become equal in our attainment, in our understanding, in everything, but each one still sees it from his initial point. We remain different, the root disparity that comes from the Creator remains, and from it we begin to see and to discover His richness and variedness.

Question: The picture at the end of correction is clear, but what happens along the way?

Answer: All the friends are in the same world, but each one thinks and understands differently. Each one has his own abilities and skills: one is more talented in music or in painting, another writes books, and another makes movies, and still another only knows how to fix a flat tire. It’s the same in spirituality: At the end of correction there are no differences, but in the intermediate levels during the ascent, everyone attains the world in his own way, of course.
[99706]From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/6/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”